Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly-ish column about the Texas Longhorns.
It’s a shame Texas is capped at only having six cities, because adding a seventh, and adding Lubbock as that seventh, would really complete things. Seven wonders of the world. Seven hills of Rome. Seven cities of Texas.
My best guess for why this hasn’t happened is that Fort Worth still wants that corner for themselves, and no, I don’t mean the geographic corner. I mean Fort Worth wants to be the “country” city. Fort Worth wants to be the “blue collar” city. My perception is that Fort Worth isn’t really either of those things, unless you’re a big pop country fan and/or you deny the existence of San Antonio, but hey, maybe I’m wrong. I’m new here. Regardless, three years in the Lone Star State is enough to realize Texas needs Lubbock, which was once named the worst city in America to spend a summer (this may be apocryphal), to ascend. The ascent of Lubbock would make us all better off. Why is this so? Well, Lubbock cares. Look at this (warning, language, foul English specifically):
Indeed, that is Texas Tech fans welcoming Chris Beard back to Lubbock.
We should make something clear here, and that’s that Chris Beard hasn’t really done anything wrong. He seems to get it, too, which further makes him not actually a bad guy. At the same time, though, Lubbock is entirely justified in treating him as a bad guy. He up and left them for their archrival, a wine and cheese-clutching school, after long encouraging them to embrace their identity as the Lone Star-drinking roughneck underdogs. This is one of those situations where everyone is right, and the great thing about sports is that unless someone really loses it and/or a security officer misses a block, nobody’s going to die, or even get hurt. Texas Tech fans can hate Chris Beard. Chris Beard doesn’t have to make some big apology. Everyone can be right, and there can be rage and animosity, and when the game’s over someone can be elated and someone can be crushed and nobody has to make any decisions regarding the defense of Taiwanese airspace.
There’s something else at play here too, though, and it’s not about Texas Tech’s behavior. It’s about tents. Take a look at this:
These tents have been there for a while. Students in Lubbock have been lined up for this game for a while. This would never happen in Austin, barring significant gimmickry or some sort of TikTok challenge. Which tracks. Texas Tech fans care a whole lot more about sports than Texas fans do. Lubbock, again, cares. Austin does not.
You could take this and spin it and say Austin should care about sports, that Texas should care about sports, that Texas fans should see the passion of Texas Tech fans and mimic it. But they shouldn’t. That’s not who Texas is. And that’s kind of the answer to this whole thing.
What’s this whole thing?
Around Longhorns circles, there are grumblings and rumblings about the school getting too soft. About the fanbase not caring. About a growing portion of the city that’s entirely oblivious to the existence of collegiate athletics. As Austin slides more towards Los Angeles in its identity, away from its Hippie Texan roots, sports matter less and specifically college sports matter less (the university is growing far slower than the town, too, which adds to this). This is natural. This is organic. And this is entirely ok.
The answer for Texas is not to try to be something it’s not. It’s not to try to be Texas Tech. It’s to try to be USC, or on the basketball court, UCLA. Yes, it’s fair to criticize each of those schools in this regard, UCLA hasn’t been UCLA for a while and USC certainly hasn’t been USC. But the model is there: Be white collar. Be stuck up. Clutch your wine and cheese, and pay extra to get your Uber quickly when you go back out to Westlake after games. Don’t show up if you don’t like the arena. Don’t show up if it’s too cold. Don’t show up if it’s too hot. Watch on the projector in your mcmansion’s theatre, scrolling Instagram all the while. And then…find a way to win anyway. Find a way to pump enough money and glamour and marketing heft into the athletic department at the University of Texas at Austin that it doesn’t matter if you aren’t gritty. That it doesn’t matter if your fans don’t actually care. That your recruits are so talented and your coaches are so intelligent and your facilities are so superb that you don’t have to worry about the element of motivation that’s traditionally inherent to the college game, because you’re no longer playing the college game. You’re playing the professional game.
Texas isn’t light years behind Texas Tech athletically. Arguments could be made it isn’t behind at all (it’s light years ahead in lesser-money sports). But unlike Lubbock, Austin is caught in the middle of a transformation from college town to big city, and that’s outside of the Longhorns’ control. An identity shift is happening, and the thing that will work will not be going back. It will be going forward. Towards sparkling luxury boxes. Towards sparkling coaches’ wristwatches. Towards sparkling champagne.
You’re rich, Texas. You’re pompous. You’re academically strong and located in a location more fun than that of almost any school in the world. You’re not Texas Tech, and you’re not going to beat them through emulation. You’re going to beat them by becoming Texas, a new Texas, and becoming that new Texas well.
Thoughts on tonight:
If I could hire any college basketball coach in the country to win me as many games as possible in one season, it would be Rick Pitino. Behind him, though, I think I’d go with Mark Adams. This guy’s the most effective head coach since Norman Dale, and the fact he looks like a high school history teacher named Mrs. Harrell makes it feel like a beautiful cosmic prank.
Brock Cunningham is going to get so much attention from the broadcasters implying that he’s the only player capable of hustling, which will in turn make my head explode as the effort of players around him gets chalked up to what the broadcast will call talent or athleticism but most children would call something else. He and Avery Benson might get a lot of minutes as Chris Beard continues to quit trying to win the pretty way and go back to the alligator comfort zone, down below the water with one’s prey in one’s teeth.
If Cunningham and Benson don’t get a lot of minutes, it’s probably good for Texas. Texas isn’t the kind of team that can out-alligator Texas Tech. Texas can certainly out-talent Texas Tech, though, so if they can keep their heads, they win, as is often the rule in these sorts of matchups.
Someone’s going to have a meltdown over defensive rebounding and to specify I mean someone in the Austin press corps.
Texas Tech is, improbably, the better team. Playing at home. Texas, gilded champions of the offseason, is the underdog. You wouldn’t know it from the tents.
